


The Little Wolf and the Hawk

by halla_lavellan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Heady Atmosphere, Love, NSFW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 07:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8195978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halla_lavellan/pseuds/halla_lavellan
Summary: Fenris waits for word from Hawke after she leaves to help the Inquisition. He spends the days recalling memories of their time together, and then discovers that she was left behind in the Fade.





	

Word had reached him four days past, a letter carried by crow to the window of the hut high in the mountains in which they had been hidden since the fall of the Circles.

“ _We’re storming Adamant tomorrow,_ ” it read, her long, jittery scrawl reaching down the short page.

The sight of her handwriting stirred something within him still, memories of those times spent by the fire in his old set in Kirkwall – both mansion and hovel – copying her letters as she taught him to read. She had fumbled at first, unsure of the best way to teach him, and so she had started with their names. _Fenris_ , she wrote, and he copied. _Hawke_. And soon after, a phrase. _I am free_. She told him not what it meant until he had it memorized, could write it without copying her words on the page. He had felt annoyance, at first. He was not free. Danarius still lived, would eventually come for him – but even if he never came, never tried to reclaim his property, his little wolf, what was it to have no master if he had no past that he could remember, and no future that he could see?

“You can build a life here,” she had told him, when he had brought it up to her, so soon after their first meeting. He liked that thought, but did not believe it, for she did not know what it was to be a slave. Freedom was the dream you forget upon waking, that slips as sand through your fingers and vanishes the harder you try to hold onto it.

“It says _I am free_ ,” she had told him, her voice soft next to his ear. A brief swoop in his stomach, then frustration at the chasm of her ignorance. It wasn’t until late that night, when she had long since gone ( _hurt, she had later told him, by how his voice had turned icy when she revealed the meaning of those three words he had not yet been ready to utter_ ) that he breathed them into the dark. The barest of whispers. “I am free.” So soft and so quiet that air hardly left his lungs. He dared not speak them louder, not yet. And then came the memory of her breath hot upon his neck, warming the skin that was turned away from the fire. Something began to grow inside of him. He pushed it away, into the deepest part of him. And then he had turned to his side and slept.

“ _We’re storming Adamant tomorrow,_ ” he read, and a new memory came to him. The first time he lay with her, desperate and wild. The feeling of her hands clutching him, her teeth carving prayers into his skin. The fear as he released within her, vulnerable at last, and the quiet comfort as she braced against him and pulled him closer. She fell asleep quickly, exhausted from the battles of that morning – there was so much fighting, in those days – and he watched her for a time, drew his fingers down her strong arms, traced the muscles as taut as her bowstring; brushed the hair from her forehead, the strands still damp with sweat. Soon he dozed, and dreamed of things he had long since forgotten, was shown memories of a time and place that had been stolen from him. _The laugh of a young girl, and the sweeping sound of wind over long grass_. He had woken with a start, panic rising within him, the little wolf for which he had been named howling wildly into the darkness around the bed on which they lay. This woman deserved far better than he could offer, he had thought to himself, and so he rose quietly and dressed, drawing a curtain against the storm in his heart.

Gods, but he regretted those three years spent without her.

“ _We’re storming Adamant tomorrow,_ ” the letter read. “ _I’ll be fine. I miss you. I’ll be home soon._ ”

_Adamant,_ he thought to himself. The name was familiar. He rose and went to the desk, strewn with papers and books as it always was. He dug through it until he found the map. _Yes, there it is_ – an old fortress in the Western Approach. And so he rolled up her letter, tucked it into the red sash he kept tied around his wrist still, and returned to the window and gazed southwest.

He kept his vigil for four days, rising only to perform the necessities of maintaining life, absorbed in thoughts and memories.

On the fourth day, he thought of the time she had claimed his name for her own. “You’re my little wolf,” she had breathed into his shoulder, tentative and quiet, afraid of his reaction. His heart had hardened, at first. How many times had Danarius said those very words to him, patronizing and cold? Then came a softening. How sweet they sounded in her whispered voice, how safe they made him feel. “I am yours,” he replied. Love blossomed in his chest in that moment. She rose slightly, then kissed the place on his chin where his tattoos began. Down she moved, covering his body with her mouth, laying claim to all the places that burned with lyrium under his skin. He had thanked any god who would listen for all the pain he had endured to lead him to this sacred moment in time, entwined with her in the soft light of morning; and he had understood, then, what it meant to worship something, and had taken her into his arms and shown her with every hard, careful movement of his body the depths to which he revered her.

A noise stirred him from his reverie. A crow, winging softly through the evening sky, a scroll bound to its leg. His heart and stomach crashed through the floor below him and he leapt to his feet as he watched the bird approach. When it alit on the sill, he removed the paper with shaking fingers. The writing was not her own, and he suddenly seemed to be watching himself from across a great distance. Dimly, he recognized Varric’s signature at the bottom of the page.

“ _I’m sorry,_ ” it began, and his heart began to thud, a funeral march within his chest. “ _I don’t really understand what happened, but somehow they got dropped into the Fade and fought a Nightmare. Hawke sacrificed herself to save the others._ ”

There was more written on the page, but he could not see it. The note dropped from hands that, he was vaguely aware, had started to glow with blue lightning, stark against the vivid crimson of the sash she had tied around his arm all those years ago. He turned towards the room, dazed, swept his eyes across this sanctuary that they had made their own these past months, since the last battle and their flight from Kirkwall. And then he was aware of only flashes.

He was moving throughout the hut.

His traveling pack was in his hands.

He was at the desk. _Where did she say she was? Yes – Skyhold_ – he had marked the coordinates on the map.

He was at the fire, banking it.

And then he was out the door and moving deeper into the mountains.


End file.
